Interrupted fundie adoptions

[Koala]

Lately I have been thinking about the increase we are seeing in interrupted adoptions in fundie families. A couple of weeks ago someone on MWOP (I don't post there, I just lurk) requested prayers for a family that is going through a terrible tragedy (thankfully their child did survive). I went over to their blog and have been reading it since. They are "fundie", no question about it, and as I scanned through the blog I discovered they had not one, but two interrupted adoptions. I wasn't able to figure out what happened with the boy, but they kept the girl much longer and wrote quite a number of posts about her (mostly complaining about how disobedient she was) :( . As the aunt of 2 precious (adopted) little boys, it was very difficult for me to read. Both of my nephews came into our family through international adoption and neither of them were infants at the time of their adoptions. There are challenges in adoption, but these children are family. Permanently. They are loved and I am certain that nothing could pry them away from their parents.

So here's my question: How common is it for adoptions to be interrupted? I am noticing a big increase in fundie families adopting kids, spending the next year or so complaining about what a burden they are, and then tossing them off to the next family as if they were never part of the family. While I know these children are better off without these families (if they are willing to abandon them in the first place) I can't help but wonder what the adoptive parents are thinking. It's like they go into this expecting it to be easy and perfect. You can tell they think the child should be grateful to them, and when they aren't it angers them.

Anyway, it has been really bothering me. :(

[Guest Anonymous]

I think they are extremely rare (although to be fair, adoption is unusual these days round here).

I know of one case, where the adoptive brother of a friend was removed from the family for safety's sake on all sides after he attacked his adoptive mother with a knife. That was a fairly extreme case though where diagnosed mental illness was a factor. It also was exacerbated by the boy having been adopted into a family just before 'mixed race' adoptions, as they were then known, were stopped. He was ill anyway and suffered terribly from the knowledge that society now did not consider such adoptions to be legitimate. The whole family have never really recovered and still feel guilt about the disruption; it was not done lightly or considered in any way his fault.

[BlueChair]

I'm not going to defend fundies who go out child collecting in the name of the lord, but disrupting an adoption is a very serious decision and is usually done in the case of severe attachment disorder and mental health issues in the children. Mental health services in this country range from horrible to non-existent for children who need intensive inpatient services. Most families do everything they possibly can to keep their children within their homes and only turn to disruption when they have maxed out their insurance for mental health services and have gone into untold thousands of dollars in debt to keep their children in the facilities that are needed to keep them and others safe. We're not talking kids who are naughty here, we're talking kids who regularly punch holes in walls, have seriously physically harmed other family members, or who have sexually abused other children in the family. Children who are in foster care or wards of the state are guaranteed these kinds of services because the state pays the bill. When it gets to a certain point, some families feel this is the only option.

When thinking about the rates of disrupted adoptions, you have to consider they types of adoption involved. In domestic infant adoption, I would imagine disruptions are almost nonexistent because the children are appropriately loved and nurtured by their adoptive parents from birth. When adopting children who have lived in foreign orphanages and institutions, the rates become much higher due to reactive attachment disorder, PTSD, FASD, and combinations of these and other factors. The rates of disruptions from foster care are also high due to the level of trauma the children have experienced, in combination with genetic mental health factors that may have been passed down from the birth parents that may have been large factors in them not being able to parent their children in the first place.

So yes, there are countless fundie families that don't to their homework and seek to adopt to fulfill some random verse about widows and orphans in the book of James, and they tend to do a horrible job of meeting their adopted children's needs, but adoption disruption is a bigger issue and not just a fundie problem.

[BelieveinScience]

From what I've seen people who disrupt adoptions keep it underwraps because of the stigma that goes with it. My friend actually disrupted one of her adoptions. I won't go into details because its her story not mine but her other kids weren't safe with this child. Sometimes it HAS to be done in the interests of everyone involved.

[chaotic life]

I run in circles of large adoptive families. I'm on a list for them, in fact. IME, it is FAR more common in religious families than people think. It is underground, but extremely common. Children are farmed out, re-homed, put in "respite," etc.

My fosterson is the third child adopted and then dumped by a Fundie, quiverful family in the years since they brought the kids to the US. His story is heartbreaking and he hasn't even reached a point where he can get angry about what's been done to him yet. It's been traumatic for my kids because we have a strict rule that children enter this house but they don't leave it and they cannot wrap their brains around this dumping children thing. If he will have us, it's our intention to make this the last stop (finally) for our kiddo. As a teen, he has to want it though. I won't push it on him, especially after what he's been through already.

I see pleas for new families for kids every month. There used to be a yahoo group that was nothing but a meeting house for families looking to disrupt and families who wanted international adoptees but couldn't adopt internationally so were looking to adop the re-homed kids. After a woman in TX dumped seven adoptees with relatives in Nigeria several years ago, the FBI did a crack down on the illegal re-homing situations. It still goes on all the time. It's surprisingly easy to re-home a child you don't want anymore. It completely falls under private adoption, same as a birthmother who places privately with an attorney. Except, if you don't do an actual adoption, it's even easier than that. It's just underground and not visible to the world.

[Coconut Flan]

That is so sad to be treating children as disposable. To re-home, do they simply do guardianship paperwork?

[chaotic life]

Depends on the situation. Sometimes the new family actually adopts the child. Sometimes they do guardianship paperwork. Sometimes they just re-home with informal respite care. Sometimes they actually put them into fostercare. Occasionally they ship them back entirely (most common in Liberian adoptions but at least one case where it's happpened in Ethiopia and Russia both). I know the first fosterson's family re-homed was re-adopted. I cannot get enough details about the second to know where she went. We have guardianship of fosterson to keep him out of formal fostercare. I had a friend who adopted 2 kids who were disrupted after their original adoptive family dumped them at a Psych hospital and refused to come back for them.

[LilMissMetaphor]

http://www.firstmotherforum.com/2012/04 ... ption.html

There's some interesting reading on this site.

We have become a culture that generally sees adoption of children from around the world as merely a good thing, not the complicated, difficult, painful, wrenching reality that it is.

And from a commenter:

One of the first phrases of wisdom that I was given regarding our international adoption was "love is not enough". And blind faith cannot begin to substitute for extensive education, counseling and therapy. Child rearing under the best of circumstances is difficult. Then take a child or children with institutional issues, attachment issues, medical and nutritional issues and it's enough to make you want to drown yourself in their bath water to keep from doing it to them. This isn't a sweet little hobby for someone with too much time on their hands. It's a lifetime investment where at the end of the day, you can expect to be treated at times with disdain, ambivalence, and contempt. And profound love. All of those feelings need a home and a safe place to bat around. And that's a parent's job.But, no doubt, it's high-stakes parenting of children with broken hearts and fragile brains. Not for quitters. Not for the faint of heart.

[BravaAmica]

I see pleas for new families for kids every month. There used to be a yahoo group that was nothing but a meeting house for families looking to disrupt and families who wanted international adoptees but couldn't adopt internationally so were looking to adop the re-homed kids. After a woman in TX dumped seven adoptees with relatives in Nigeria several years ago, the FBI did a crack down on the illegal re-homing situations. It still goes on all the time. It's surprisingly easy to re-home a child you don't want anymore. It completely falls under private adoption, same as a birthmother who places privately with an attorney. Except, if you don't do an actual adoption, it's even easier than that. It's just underground and not visible to the world.

This sounds like they're re-homing a dog. And it makes me sick to my stomach that they're treating their children this way.

[DarkAnts]

I know of a family in my community that sent their adopted child to The Ranch For Kids. The child was violent and had attacked many family members. It turns out that the child was part of a sex ring and has many emotional cars. The child is doing well. The family makes it a point to visit every weekend. The child is learning life skills. The caseworker and the child think its in the childs best interest to stay at the ranch until the age of 18. Its heartbreaking for the family, but, its in the best interest of the child. The family now has visits away from the ranch. They usually go camping. The child came home for christmas. The family had kept the childs room just the way she left it her. It touched the child to see that there was still a place for her in the home.

The cost for the treatment is expensive. They are basically sending her to a private school. Her mother took on a night job to pay tuition. The family has one other child. They are also saving money for this child to go to college. I admire their commitment.

http://www.ranchforkids.org/

[terranova]

What happens with fundie families who have "hard to manage" biological children who are not so easy to just pass the buck on? Surely there must be families out there with children with mental health issues, or even physical disabilities that some would see as a "burden". Is it blanket training or Journey to the Heart or Bible Camp or nothing?

[Peas n carrots]

I think the fundies believe they are adopting a poor orphan who will be forever grateful for them. It always burns my brisket, as my mother had the same belief when my step-dad adopted me that I will turn into a grateful little girl. Today I am now grateful as my step-dad has by far been the best parent (mom/read dad not so much), but I hate that gratitude was something that my mother wanted forced out of me.

Add on top of this the serious emotional and mental issues some of these kids have, you can see it is a recipe for disaster. I'm not sure if a lot of fundie parents are in denial that it could happen to them, or believe that God and love can fix everything, sheer ignorance or the agencies not preparing the prospective parents with informaiton (I get a feeling it's a bit of all of the above) but I worry about these kids getting shuffled around so much. It can only make whatever problems they do have worse.

[Peas n carrots]

What happens with fundie families who have "hard to manage" biological children who are not so easy to just pass the buck on? Surely there must be families out there with children with mental health issues, or even physical disabilities that some would see as a "burden". Is it blanket training or Journey to the Heart or Bible Camp or nothing?

YES! That too...it's easier to give up the adopted kid because, well they aren't technically your own. That angers me as well.

[AnnieC 305]

So far I've only been to one potential foster parent class, and out of the six families there four left when they were told they couldn't use physical discipline on the children.

I wonder if so many of these children are "disrupting" out of these families because a social worker has told them that no, you can't "train" your children like that, and then they disrupt before an investigation can start. Or because the inherent crazy making crap of "fundie" land exacerbates the trauma symptoms. Or because the child now feels comfortable enough to start talking about sexual abuse in their past and now they aren't pure any longer.

I know a lot of this ought to have been looked at during the home study process, but in my experience Christians, especially "fundie" ones, get a special privileged pass in this country so it wouldn't surprise me if the social worker didn't look at them as closely as she should. After all, all Christians are good people, right?

[Mela99]

I thought fundies and such -- or a majority of them -- refused to adopt because they would get the sins of the parent in the child. I always think of the story of little Dennis Jurgens. Adopted by a religious mom, decided he was 'trouble' then basically tortured the poor little boy till he was killed.

The saddest part is that the biological mom was more or less forced to give him up and counted off the days till he turned 18 and she could find him... and found out he'd been dead for 16 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Dennis_Jurgens

[chaotic life]

When you adopt internationally, normally the adoption is finalized before the child enters your home and NO jurisdiction to stop you from corporal punishment exists.

I love the commenter quoted. That basically sums up adopting older, hurting kiddos. It's HARD work, and most of the time the ONLY thanks you're going to get is disdain. I didn't go into this for my kids to be thankful that I stick with them. I went into this because I have a talent for helping hurting kiddos. I happen to think these kiddos deserve a chance and someone willing to fight for them, even if they never get better.

The Ranch is excellent for children hurting so badly they cannot trust someone to be mom or dad again. It's horrifically expensive. I looked at when I was considering an out of home placement for my really difficult kiddo. However, his IQ and his medical issues disqualified him for out of home placements. Now that he's on hospice, I'm finally getting support to work with him. I did it solo for four years, with nothing but my committment that children enter this house but they do NOT leave it....and a really wonderful Ped Psych who kept him safe enough for us to live with him.

If my fosterkiddo doesn't want to integrate or try to trust another family, top of my list for him is JobCorp, but I have to get him to 16 for that to be available. If I can get him a solid education and a chance for a future, and therapy to help him at least have the chance of healing from what has been done to him, then it might be the best I can do for him with the little bit of time he has left as a minor.

Some of the Fundie families who adopt these kids are really talented and good at what they do with hurting kids. Some are in this trend to rescue orphans and have NO business adopting kids. The later drives me batty, especially when they do treat these kids like they are disposable.

As for what Fundie families do when their bio kids are difficult, it varies. DH and I were both raised Fundie-light and were both thrown out as teens when we got too difficult, which is part of why I keep holding out a hand of support for other hurting kiddos. Dh was thrown out at 13. I was thrown out at 16. Fosterkiddo was 14 when he was thrown out.

I love what I do. I've been doing this for a decade and I was called to do this. I love standing in the gap for hurting kiddos. I love helping them realize that I'm strong enough to take whatever they throw at me and unlike others in their lives before me, I'm going to stand here, take what they throw at me and still fight for them when their anger subsides. I love what they have taught me about life and love. I love what they teach my other kiddos about life and love as well. We are all blessed and humbled by the opportunity to love and help my kiddos get through their pain into healing and trust, even when the journey has been rocky. I wish people wouldn't treat these kids like this. No kid deserves it, but these kids who have already been through SO much do not deserved to go through it again in homes where they are supposed to be there forever and be loved forever.

[chaotic life]

FWIW, a decade ago when we were in our first adoption journey, I asked the American NGO director realistically what support where the kids showing that they needed to get to healing from the past coming out of that country and that orphanage. Jerk informed me that all these kids needed was full bellies, warm beds, and lots of love and they would be fine. I was FURIOUS. No flipping way did those kids survive what they went through and *only* need lots of love and food. Yes, my child needed lots of love and food (and good gravy you wouldn't believe the food that child consumed that first year....on second thought nevermind that particular child continues to consume food that should make most of us naseuous with the volume of it). However, said child also needed someone to hold them, fight for them, get them support services, trek to therapy hours away for months on end and remind them that they were loved and I wasn't going anywhere even when they were hurting and afraid.

That child of my heart....that child is AMAZING. If I had never been that child's mother, I would never have seen the amazing beauty this child brought to my life. That child has three years left before I have to let them leave me for college. I bawl just thinking about when my oldest baby is going to leave me. Said child and Dh roll their eyes at me, but that is MY BABY....I fought beside that child for years to help them heal and feel safe and my reward is NOT that said child is grateful but that I have the priviledge of watching a life well lived now. It took a LOT more than food and love to get that child through, but it was worth every effort it took to mother that one and is a constant reminder to me when some of the others get rough that they will all eventually work their way through to the other side of their pain, whether they make of their lives everything this one has will be their choice. That they are given that chance is MY responsiblity as their mother to give them.

[chaotic life]

FWIW, a decade ago when we were in our first adoption journey, I asked the American NGO director realistically what support where the kids showing that they needed to get to healing from the past coming out of that country and that orphanage. Jerk informed me that all these kids needed was full bellies, warm beds, and lots of love and they would be fine. I was FURIOUS. No flipping way did those kids survive what they went through and *only* need lots of love and food. Yes, my child needed lots of love and food (and good gravy you wouldn't believe the food that child consumed that first year....on second thought nevermind that particular child continues to consume food that should make most of us naseuous with the volume of it). However, said child also needed someone to hold them, fight for them, get them support services, trek to therapy hours away for months on end and remind them that they were loved and I wasn't going anywhere even when they were hurting and afraid.

That child of my heart....that child is AMAZING. If I had never been that child's mother, I would never have seen the amazing beauty this child brought to my life. That child has three years left before I have to let them leave me for college. I bawl just thinking about when my oldest baby is going to leave me. Said child and Dh roll their eyes at me, but that is MY BABY....I fought beside that child for years to help them heal and feel safe and my reward is NOT that said child is grateful but that I have the priviledge of watching a life well lived now. It took a LOT more than food and love to get that child through, but it was worth every effort it took to mother that one and is a constant reminder to me when some of the others get rough that they will all eventually work their way through to the other side of their pain, whether they make of their lives everything this one has will be their choice. That they are given that chance is MY responsiblity as their mother to give them.

[Koala]

FWIW, a decade ago when we were in our first adoption journey, I asked the American NGO director realistically what support where the kids showing that they needed to get to healing from the past coming out of that country and that orphanage. Jerk informed me that all these kids needed was full bellies, warm beds, and lots of love and they would be fine. I was FURIOUS. No flipping way did those kids survive what they went through and *only* need lots of love and food. Yes, my child needed lots of love and food (and good gravy you wouldn't believe the food that child consumed that first year....on second thought nevermind that particular child continues to consume food that should make most of us naseuous with the volume of it). However, said child also needed someone to hold them, fight for them, get them support services, trek to therapy hours away for months on end and remind them that they were loved and I wasn't going anywhere even when they were hurting and afraid.

That child of my heart....that child is AMAZING. If I had never been that child's mother, I would never have seen the amazing beauty this child brought to my life. That child has three years left before I have to let them leave me for college. I bawl just thinking about when my oldest baby is going to leave me. Said child and Dh roll their eyes at me, but that is MY BABY....I fought beside that child for years to help them heal and feel safe and my reward is NOT that said child is grateful but that I have the priviledge of watching a life well lived now. It took a LOT more than food and love to get that child through, but it was worth every effort it took to mother that one and is a constant reminder to me when some of the others get rough that they will all eventually work their way through to the other side of their pain, whether they make of their lives everything this one has will be their choice. That they are given that chance is MY responsiblity as their mother to give them.

I love your story. And Angrila's. Makes me feel better about people.

On a positive note, my sil recently completed her second adoption and she will be under a social workers supervision for the next 5 years. I don't know how wide spread this new policy is, but it's a step in the right direction imo.

[slickcat79]

I've wondered if fundies have started adopting more lately in response to pro-choice arguments? It's a common argument that people who are "pro-life" will not put any effort into helping those babies and children that they insist other women give birth to. Plus they like to say that "just choosing adoption" is a viable option for every woman considering abortion, but then it's easy to argue back that there are millions of kids out there that no one wants to adopt.

I'm just wondering if it's even less biblical or christian of them, but more of a political statement? Maybe they actually think that if they can snap up all the world's unwanted orphans, they could stamp out abortion.

[FloraDoraDolly]

On the domestic adoption front, I was once in a situation where I had to stand in a long line right behind two women who happened to be social workers. They had many complaints about their supervisor, who believed all children should be placed in a home. The two social workers told horror story after horror story about kids whose behavior was so violent that they could not be contained in a home. They worried that one day, one of those kids was going to kill somebody. But no matter what the kids did, the supervisor refused to place them in a group facility-- all they needed was a loving home and they'd be fine, he insisted. One of the kids was so difficult to place that he ended up in a foster home in Ohio. The social worker was NOT happy about having to regularly make three-hour trips to check on him.

[SoybeanQueen]

I think the fundies believe they are adopting a poor orphan who will be forever grateful for them.

Couldn't agree more. You can see it even in the language so many of them use. "Orphans" who still have living biological parents, for example.

The thing that irritates me the most is that if some of these families had done even a tiny amount of research into older child adoption, they would know there's a higher likelihood of attachment disorders in certain situations. They would also have a more trained eye to spot some of the flags. It isn't always possible to spot these things before adoptions take place, but in many of the stories I've seen/heard, it seems like the adoptive parents should have been way more aware of the risks. And that it's a long haul to get over attachment issues. And that disrupting is one of the worst things for the child, because it only strengthens their resistance to future attachment.

Two of my children have attachment disorders, so I have a small amount of personal experience. Not just bashing other adoptive parents at random.

[SoybeanQueen]

This sounds like they're re-homing a dog. And it makes me sick to my stomach that they're treating their children this way.

That's exactly what many of these parents make it sound like. A while back, a woman posted on a parenting forum I sometimes visit, hoping to find a family of her specific religion to take her son because she could no longer handle his attachment issues. The cold way she referred to him made me see red. Never once did she call him her son. Also, if she's not willing to put in the work to help her kid, why the hell would she think she had the right to require him to continue with her religion? Frankly, from what she said, it sounded like the failure to attach was on her, because her son wasn't the grateful, fixed-by-love doll she expected.

[SoybeanQueen]

YES! That too...it's easier to give up the adopted kid because, well they aren't technically your own. That angers me as well.

Ooooh. I've never typed this out before, and it makes me feel a bit stabby all over again to do so, but.... Someone (a fundie, actually) once referred to some of my kids as "my adoptives." As in "so where are your adoptives today?" After the moment of stunned silence, a raised eyebrow, and a really pissed off look, all I could manage to say was, "Do you mean my CHILDREN?" I swear, it really is like people don't consider them real kids sometimes.

[CrazySister]

As much as I wish this weren't true, "Love cures all" is NOT true! It's simply not; there ARE kids who will never heal from the devastation they experienced in their lives. I think some of the disruption in fundie families (and non-fundies as well) is naivete. Believing "if I just provide everything Child needs, then they'll be 'fixed.'" The problem is, they don't realize there are children who are irreparably broken. It sounds SO incredibly harsh and hopeless, but they go into it thinking it'll be easy-peasy and a little bit of Gothard with Jesus mixed in will solve everything. If fundies go into older-child adoption believing all they have to do is Gothardize the kids, then no wonder they've got "problem" children!

That being said, there are plenty of adopted-older kids who WILL respond to the love they recieve. However, if the child's already experienced profound loss & abuse, being placed with a fundie family who has utterly NO idea of accurate child development or any idea of things such as PTSD, attachment disorders, trauma history, or any other type of emotional or mental disorders/illness, then of COURSE it's going to result in needing to remove the child from their home! THEY SHOULDN'T BE ADOPTING IN THE FIRST PLACE!! :angry-screaming: